This article aims to highlight the importance of teaching Vietnameseculture to foreign students at HUCFL. Teaching a language implies teaching aculture, thus Vietnamese culture is supposed to be taught to foreign learners duringthe process of teaching Vietnamese language. | JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, Hue University, Vol. 70, No 1 (2012) pp. 163-170 TEACHING VIETNAMESE CULTURE TO FOREIGN STUDENTS AT HUCFL: SOME SUGGESTED TECHNIQUES Ngo Thi Khai Nguyen College of Foreign Languages, Hue University Abstract. This article aims to highlight the importance of teaching Vietnamese culture to foreign students at HUCFL. Teaching a language implies teaching a culture, thus Vietnamese culture is supposed to be taught to foreign learners during the process of teaching Vietnamese language. Accordingly, some suggested techniques are put forward by the writer in the hope that learning Vietnamese culture will be an exhilirating experience for foreign students at HUCFL. The techniques proposed include cultural islands, culture capsules, dramas, media/ visuals, celebrating festivals, quiz, mini researches and presentations and last but not least: music. 1. Definitions of culture Culture is such a broad concept that encompasses all respects of human life that it is hard to give a comprehensive definition of culture. There has been a series of ways to define culture such as [9]: Kluckhohn, C., & Kelly, . (1945). The concept of culture. In R. Linton (Ed.). The Science of Man in the World Culture. New York. "By culture we mean all those historically created designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational, and nonrational, which exist at any given time as potential guides for the behavior of men" (pp. 78-105). Useem, J., & Useem, R. (1963). Human Organizations, 22(3). "Culture has been defined in a number of ways, but most simply, as the learned and shared behavior of a community of interacting human beings" (p. 169). Hofstede, G. (1984). National cultures and corporate cultures. In . Samovar & . Porter (Eds.), Communication Between Cultures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. "Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another" (p. 51). Damen, L. (1987). Culture Learning: The .
